Development

In her new book Everyday Ambassador (Atria Paperback), Kate Otto lays out a program for young people seeking to make a difference.

It is an important job of the media to use their best judgement when reporting on every false alarm, sniffle or sneeze that is heard across the globe. The real danger of Ebola is in the panic it can cause, both in West Africa and elsewhere.

In 1997, after trial proceedings lasting over three years, Berlin’s High Criminal Court convicted four individuals of murdering Iranian dissidents in a Berlin restaurant—and more significantly—explicitly found the murders were ordered at the highest levels of government in Tehran. The historic judgment culminated in an unprecedented diplomatic shift between Iran and Europe: Every EU member […]

Photo Credit: www.worldcancerday.org February 4 marks World Cancer Day, a time when the entire global community — regardless of nationality, profession, ethnicity, or any other form of identity — collectively remembers those whom cancer has impacted or claimed. Yet it is also a day when we’ll celebrate the miraculous accomplishments in cancer research and care […]

The struggle to establish and maintain stable democracies continues the world over. As I have said many times before, no one ever said democracy is easy or simple, but it provides the best opportunities for freedom and prosperity (also see Churchill’s view of democracy in my “about the author” script). But as of now, how […]

The First Drop of Water in a Probable Waterfall: Global expansion of cancer surveillance is an urgent concern that should be prominent on the global health and development agendas, and should be added to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s). I’m sanguine that the unprecedented momentum given to chronic diseases since the United Nations 2011 High […]

2013 has been a year fraught with many challenges for democracy. One could circle the globe and find democratic struggles in every corner of it- from Maldives to Thailand, in Egypt and Iran, Venezuela to Burma, and of course the United States (I still shudder when thinking about the October government shutdown). Many of these […]

Photo Credit: Village Earth Press The world just commemorated World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, 2013: the 26th World AIDS Day. As we observed events unfold, from Kuala Lumpur, to London, Washington, D.C. and Cape Town, one common thread was apparent: partnership. If there is to be a common denominator in each thriving battle against […]

For a  large number of refugees fleeing Syria, life in the place they end up is no less a struggle. Many Syrians looking to escape the ravages of war in their home country have made their way to Bulgaria (via Turkey) — the country I now call home. The problem is that the influx has […]

In my update on Thailand and Maldives a few weeks ago, both countries were on the precipice of making decisions that would determine the direction of their democracies, or lack thereof. Let’s see how things turned out. Thailand On Monday, Nov. 11, 2013, Thailand’s senate made a strong statement against former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who […]

In 1900 we lived to be only 32 years on average. Today the global average life expectancy is 69 years and in 2050 we will live to be 76 years. For every month you live, you add one week to your life expectancy. In a new TED talk, Dr. Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus Center […]

Sadly, the adage “the more things change the more they stay the same” is perfectly to describe struggles in keeping strong democracy in Asia. Upon returning from hiatus, I started looking for story ideas and ran across some “updates” to items I had covered earlier this year. But in reality not much is different in […]